


What The Water Gave Me

by SydneyLouWho



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2017-11-22
Packaged: 2019-02-05 04:38:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12787113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SydneyLouWho/pseuds/SydneyLouWho
Summary: AU in which Jaime saves Elia and her children in the sack of King's Landing.  For Laurel, in the GoT fic exchange round 16.





	1. Part 1: Ari of Braavos

**Author's Note:**

  * For [grumkin_snark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/grumkin_snark/gifts).



> For Laurel. This was supposed to be just a happy-ending fic for Elia and her children, but it morphed into something more complex and kinda weird. I hope you like it anyway.

**Rhaenys**

“Run, little one, and hide like I taught you.  Like in our hiding games,” Mama urges, and Rhaenys is running to Papa’s chambers, scrambling beneath the bed.

_Be quiet_ , she tells herself.   _It’s how you win the game_.  But she knows this is no game, knows from the way Mama’s voice shook as she told her to run.

She crawls as far back as she can, tears streaming down her cheeks, but she is careful not to make a sound.   _Quiet as a mouse, like Mama said.  The seeker will never find you if you’re quiet as a mouse._

She hears Aegon crying in the other room, and Mama is screaming too, but then she stops and Aegon’s cries are the only ones bouncing from the walls.

Frantic footsteps come closer, and Rhaenys jumps as they stop near the bed.  But when a face appears, it is one she recognizes.  “Come little dragon, you need to come with me. _Hurry_.”

She scrambles from beneath the bed and Ser Jaime scoops her up roughly, holding her against the cool of his armor.  He rushes her back to the nursery, where Mama still cradles the screaming Aegon.  She wonders at the splotches of red on Mama’s dress and Ser Jaime’s armor and the men who lie on the floor, but she cannot muster the voice to ask.  All Rhaenys can do is cry.

“A boat,” Mama says. “I was promised a boat, but when the city was stormed I couldn’t - the Spider showed me an entrance to a passage, I can show you -“  Ser Jaime nods.  And then they are running.  They run until through many tunnels they reach a small, empty street.  Mama coughs, leaning against a wall.  Rhaenys presses her face harder onto Ser Jaime’s armor.  It is too cold to be comforting though, and she wishes Mama could hold her too.

“We have to go, Princess Elia,” Ser Jaime urges, and then they are off again, until they reach a shore with a small boat.  Ser Jaime places Rhaenys into it and Mama and Aegon climb in as well, but Ser Jaime turns away.

“You cannot leave us,” Elia begs.  “Your duty is to the king and his family -“

Ser Jaime snaps back to them.  “I’ve killed the king!  And my father -“

Mama hardly flinches.  “This child in my arms, _he_ is your king now.  You’re sworn to protect him too,” Mama spits.  Rhaenys thinks she’s never heard her so angry.

Ser Jaime looks like he will turn away again, but instead he clenches his fists and climbs into the boat, taking the oars.

Rhaenys falls asleep with the waves in her ears and tears drying on her cheeks, with her face buried in her mother’s skirts.

When she wakes, she is being hoisted up into a bigger boat, and the sky is lighter.  She almost cries again, until she sees Mama following behind.

“Where are we going?” she asks when they are below deck.  

“Home,” Mama says, and strokes her hair.

…

They only stay in Sunspear for a short time.  She overhears them talking, about how it isn’t safe.  

But she _feels_ safe here.  She meets people who call themselves aunts and uncles and cousins.  Her cousin Arianne braids her hair and tells her she looks like a true princess, and tells her that when they’re safe she will take her down to pick oranges in the gardens.

They never get that chance, though, because soon enough she’s being led onto another boat, but Arianne hugs her close and tells her they’ll meet again.  Rhaenys hopes it’s true.

…

Rhaenys notices Ser Jaime has stopped wearing his white armor and cloak, and now wears a simpler grey.  He looks older now than she remembers him being when she’d loved to follow him around the halls of the Red Keep, her nurse following close behind.

“Ser Jaime, what happened to your armor?” she asks, and Ser Jaime flinches.

“I’m no longer a member of the kingsguard,” he says, “and it’s safer to wear these colors, so no one will recognize us.”

“But Mama said Aegon is our king now.  Mama doesn’t lie.”

“No, but the man who sits the throne doesn’t think so,” he says.

“Grandfather’s throne?”

“You shouldn’t ask these questions,” he snaps.

“And Papa, where is -“

“ _Stop_.”  And for a moment she fears Ser Jaime will strike her, and she flinches, but instead he turns and buries his head in his hands.

…

Rhaenys hears snippets of what happened to her family, when no one thinks she’s listening.  Papa is in the river, felled by a stag.  And Grandfather by someone they call a kingslayer.  

In her dreams each night she sees them, Papa being chased by a giant stag, and Grandfather by a beast of a man with a sword long as a tree.  Sometimes she doesn’t know who’s more frightening, Grandfather or the Kingslayer.  She always wakes screaming, until Mama pulls her close to her chest and whispers that she is safe.  

They make a home in a small house in a place they call Braavos, smashed together with others in the middle of a crowded street, and Ser Jaime takes his purse of coins to town and returns with a bundle of strange clothes, unlike any dresses she has ever worn.  Mama says they must dress differently, and they will go by different names.

Mama lets Rhaenys choose her own name.  Rhaenys chooses Arianne, for her cousin, but Mama makes her shorten it to Ari.  She likes the way it sounds.   _Ari of Braavos._


	2. Part 2: The Pale Morning Sun

**Elia**

She knows it’s strange, but sometimes as Elia watches her children playing on the docks of Braavos, she finds herself wondering if she prefers her quiet life with Jaime and her children in hiding to the one in which she was married to Rhaegar.

It is not an easy life, to be sure, having to hide her identity.  But before long it becomes routine.  Every morning she and Jaime take the children to the water to play with the other Braavosi children, then to the market for supplies.  Once a moon’s turn, Jaime will go to the docks and find a sailor who gives him a sack of coins from Dorne, and he takes a long, crowded path home to ensure he isn’t being followed.

When they’d first begun their journey, Jaime had been sullen and withdrawn.  And when in Dorne they’d received word of his sister’s marriage to Robert Baratheon, he scarcely spoke to anyone for a fortnight.  

“You love your sister,” she’d said to him once, and he’d snapped, “Of  _ course _ .”

Elia was not as great a fool as everyone else in Westeros.  She’d spent time with the Lannisters in her youth, and even then she’d noticed.

“You  _ love _ your sister.”  And he’d looked at her then like he might flee, his face pale as parchment.

And as much as it horrified her to see that truth in his eyes, he was still the man who saved her life and her children’s.

They’d never spoken of it further, and eventually he’d stopped sulking.

It is strange pretending to be his wife now, while she had a true husband before, as little as Rhaegar did in the end to ensure her safety and their children’s.  But she cannot help remembering that they were almost betrothed, when Jaime was little more than a child.

“Do you ever wonder how different our lives would have been had your father agreed to our betrothal?” she asks him as they watch the children skipping rocks off the dock.

He laughs.  “We certainly wouldn’t be in Braavos, would we?”

“No, I suppose we would be in Casterly Rock leading an average life as lord and lady.  You know, I always wished for an adventurous life like my brother Oberyn, but I never expected  _ this _ .”

“No one quite plans to go into hiding, I suppose.”

She laughs, and it turns to a cough.  Her health is tedious as ever, but the sea air seems to do her well as it did in Dorne, and no one in Braavos seems to mind if she must stay a day in bed.  On those days, Jaime takes the children to the shore himself, and Elia knows they are safe.

As she looks upon his face in the pale Braavosi morning, she thinks, not for the first time, that her companion is quite handsome.  Jaime has always been handsome, just as his sister is beautiful, but age has done him well.  

_ Don’t be a fool _ , she chides herself.   _ You know who he desires _ .

But as though he is reading her mind, he leans in and presses his lips to hers.  Rough lips, nothing like Rhaegar’s, but sweet.

“I’m sorry,” he says like it’s necessary, but before she can form a reply a small hand is tugging at her skirts and Aegon is calling “Mama, Mama!” and she is scooping him up into her arms.  And Rhaenys follows, her hair sticky with sweat from running up and down the dock and a smile lighting her face.

Elia does not know how long they’ll stay here in their little house by the shore.  She has heard whispers of Rhaegar’s sister and brother somewhere in this city.  She thinks Rhaenys and Aegon would like to see them.  

But for now, this is enough.


End file.
